2023-11-04: Setting the Trap
- Log: Setting the Trap
- Cast: Leah Sadalbari, Loren Voss
- Where: Westbreak Island
- Date: November 4, 2023
- Summary: Leah has an important task for Loren.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Sumer Base is cold. No, not just cold--Sumer is freezing, a thoroughly unpleasant place to go that exists largely to keep track of the strange effects that are rumored to come from the Sielje magical school. The truth is that there are some effects, if distant ones, from experiments half a dimension over. None of that has proven anything useful as fruit for the base, though. It's barely interesting enough that this base isn't considered a punishment detail like some others are.
And Leah Sadalbari is here, in a thick coat. For once, she does not feel the frostbite threatening to gather against her metal limbs. For once, she does not feel the dull ache of those heavy cybernetics in the cold...
One might imagine it would make her feel better, not to feel such things. It does not.
"Here," she says, and they are in a courtyard. She gestures to a small object that a pair of soldiers have just brought out--roughly the size of a lunchpail, a transmitter and some machinery.
"This is what you will be operating. When they finish attuning the frequency, you will bring it into the center of the base for activation."
The soldiers are gone, before she says this. They don't know; they don't need to know.
But Loren does.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Even though his coat, Loren can still feel the wind's bite. Is it because of the position of this place close to the sea? Or some interference from Sielje's half-dimensional position between this world and another place? He's not sure and, frankly, he doesn't really care to know the answer.
All he knows is, it's cold.
And that they're here to use this place to put an end to it.
And...
He gazes at the box that's been left behind by the rank and file, sitting almost innocuously on the ground.
He knows one other thing.
He'd been the one to suggest to her that they ought to lay a trap for Siegfried. To put a stop to him before he caused more destruction. There had been a scant few survivors they had rescued from Urartu: most of them were not fit for service anymore, not as they were. And Loren hasn't forgotten the Tzadkiel and all those who had died in the crash.
"..."
But, isn't this...?
"Is this... necessary, Commander?"
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Leah feels the cold, but it does not touch her. Not anymore. Unless in another way, it already has.
It was a good suggestion, though. To lay a trap, to destroy Siegfried once and for all. To prevent further loss of life, sure.
"Unless you have a better suggestion," Leah says, turning to face Loren. She is not in the armor of the Watcher, now. She is in a different sort of uniform. And she remembers...
Much.
"Deploying myself and an Element against Siegfried was insufficient, before. I do not believe that deploying the Elements as a whole would operate differently--to fight against soldiers is his entire experience, his work of a thousand years. What we need is a weapon that Siegfried does not know how to counter."
"This weapon."
"And you will be the one to put it in place, where I can activate it."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's strange, he thinks, how twisted up this plan has him when so much rides on its success. And it's not even a matter of his colleagues: what would he do if Siegfried turned his attentions further north than this? What would he think if he got a dreaded missive about an attack on his mother's base? He knows they have to stop it before they -- and he -- lose anyone else.
And yet, he's still found himself recoiling. Why is that?
He only voices such hesitation aloud because she's still, in spite of everything, Leah. And because they're alone. Questioning a superior's judgement is unacceptable, whatever the reason. And yet, he still finds something in his gut twisting at the thought of what Leah has assembled.
And what he'll set in motion.
"..."
Loren can but shake his head. "I don't." How could he, if even she couldn't think of anything but this? "I know. I know what must be done. I..."
She explains, patiently even, he thinks. They can't throw what they have at him again and expect it to turn out differently. He's used to their strategies: he has had a very long time to examine and adapt to Solaris' approach, even before the fight at the Photosphere. Or at Urartu, for that matter.
"...I know," he says again, looking away from her eyes. "And... I'm the one you need to do it." Not Ramses. Not the Elements. Not Azoth, or even someone like Tabitha. It has to be him.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Leah, one assumes, would also be displeased should the base further to the north be attacked. Right? She still does seem to care for the Voss family...
One hopes.
The Commander could rightly impose sanction for questioning her--but that is not what she does. She wants him to question her judgement, from the way she looks at him, from the way her blue eyes bore into him. She waits.
And he answers. "Yes," she says. "It makes you uncomfortable, doesn't it?" she asks. "To use material such as this. To know that I will be shaping flesh, not machinery."
"The Wels are not pointless cruelty. The Ethos culled their numbers to ensure that they would not overrun the world..."
"But they will serve a purpose, too, in what must be."
"And you are, indeed, the one to do this."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Loren can only hope. It's all he's got, especially these days.
With anyone else, he could even have risked his career. But it's true: Leah has encouraged him to ask questions and so perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that he has, in his own fashion, taken her up on it. Perhaps he even recognizes that in her gaze.
Perhaps it is another reason for why he averts his gaze.
"It... does," he says, because even in this he hesitates, wondering, perhaps, if this itself isn't another trap for him to stumble into. Strange: when he was young, interactions were simple. But after Engil died... well, everything had changed. Even now, it seems that he's left to struggle and often, fail.
"Is it because he'll expect machinery?" he asks, after a moment's hesitation. If he's going to be the one to do this, then, he thinks, he wants to know why.
"...Why is it me?"
In every way it can be applied.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
Hope is a dangerous, dangerous thing. And potent. Leah sees it in Loren.
But the Commander nods when Loren answers that it makes him uncomfortable, and if it was a trap, he has not yet sprung it. She listens, when he continues. She listens, when he questions. Perhaps he's come a long way, because...
"No," Leah answers. "At least, not entirely. It is true that he'll expect machinery, and he won't expect these."
A pause. "Flesh--the Wels' flesh--is the most potent conductor of magical energy known to Solaris. That means that it is the most powerful enemy we can send against Siegfried."
"Flesh... will be key to our goals."
Then, she turns towards Loren, and perhaps it was once easier to imagine that a single-eyed gaze was the most intense she could give. As it turns out, it is not.
"Your Etheric signature is compatible with the device. Your skill is sufficient that you can shield yourself from what will come, and survive the doing. You have the 'power' to do this."
"But above all else it is because you have been chosen, Loren. I have chosen you. It is a heavy responsibility that weighs on your shoulders--but only you, I think, are the one who will draw us closer to God, when the time comes."
"You will do what we could not."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It all comes down to the power of flesh -- to what the body alone can achieve.
He still blinks when Leah lays it out so plainly. It's not as if he didn't know it, of course: a (Solarian) machine cannot work Ether. It can channel it, certainly and it can store and even empower it, but it is not able to be itself an origin point for that power. A body -- a person -- on the other hand...
And the Wels used to be people.
But whether he did or did not know it is irrelevant. It's more to the fact of what she's proposing, precisely: to use the tortured existences that are the Wels as a weapon like this.
To use them, in the end, as a massive Etheric battery. Were Solaris at all bound by the Treaty of Iscariot, this would certainly be in violation. And here he had thought she merely meant to unleash their monstrous might upon Siegfried: while that certainly plays a role, their combined Etheric prowess will prove devastating for the Sorcery-impaired Demon.
That is, at least, certainly what Loren still expects of Siegfried. He thinks again of the Medium tucked away in his kit and wonders if it will prove effective a second time.
"So... that's your plan. You want to overwhelm him with its Ether--"
He had once thought her gaze before could have pinned him to the floor. Her gaze now feels almost as if he has somehow been obliterated yet managed to still remain in existence under its intensity.
The reason she needs him to do it is far more prosaic, he thinks, even in spite of the force of that look: it's because it's compatible with his Etheric signature. What this unleashes at short range then would prove devastating to anyone else sensitive to such signals.
Yet, a part of him wonders about that, even so. Was it just chance that a weapon was developed that only he was capable of pulling the trigger, or...?
He has always been a little paranoid in that way. Always, ever since the accident.
"...Right," he says, gamely, nearly the model of the soldier he's never felt he's managed to be. "Understood, Ma--"
But -- no. That's not the only reason, Leah says, and he starts. "Chosen?" he utters, feeling in that instant like a child of twelve. Part of him sings to the honor of it. Another part of him recoils under the pressure it demands. "Only... me?" And he swallows, reeling under the weight of that pronouncement. He hasn't forgotten what she'd said to him. A better world is within reach, if only they...
Some sacrifices are necessary. Nothing comes for free.
He's only a Captain, in medical at that. He's not even in his mid-twenties. It's too much. But there's no one else. No one else can do this. And they can't let this all slide. Can't let it go the direction it's headed. These things-- they're already damned. What's a little longer against a perfect eternity?
Why is he the one who decides who might live or die?
"I... I'll do what I can. For the better world," he says at last, glancing at her just long enough. It's hard for him to look at her, as if she were a metaphorical bonfire or the sun at noon. "Major," Loren says, ducking his head in a stiff nod as he begins to pass her by.
He picks it up gingerly. The device does, after all, hold the weight of so many lives and would-be futures. This is his to protect until the time comes.
"I will prepare accordingly."
With his free hand he salutes and makes his departure to the warmth of Sumer Base.
Leah is alone in the yard. But not for long.
There are footsteps behind her, soft in the snow that has begun to pile up. "Boys like that are so easy to manipulate," muses Myyah Hawwa, Kahran Ramses' aide-de-camp, regarding the large metal crates with mild interest. She laughs lightly, though not unkindly. "I trust that I am not disturbing anything, Major?"
Leah Sadalbari is not the only woman in Solaris who wears another mask.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
The Wels were people. And what will they be...?
No, Solaris does not follow treaties, certainly not the Treaty of Iscariot. And even as Loren mentions what her plan must be, she watches him. She watches, and she waits, until he believes he understands, and then he starts.
"Only you," she reiterates.
And then he answers. He glances back, and that is enough for now. He takes the machine, and, "I know that you will."
She is silent, in those next few moments until he is gone. And until...
"They are," Leah agrees with Myyah, still looking after where Loren went. "But 'manipulation' and 'guidance' are so often the same. All that differs is how one 'sees' it."
She turns towards Myyah, then, and shakes her head. "No, nothing."
"The plan proceeds as it should. This test will serve to show us of what the material is now capable."
"I was serious, you know. If he doesn't break... He could be an asset to our plan."
"Regardless... I am prepared."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Only him. Once, he had wanted to be a hero. Once, this would have been everything he'd wished for. Now -- there's a part of Loren that increasingly wants to do nothing more than run away.
But he can't let them down. His family, his people -- and whatever blessed existence that possible future might well encompass.
He'll do it. Whatever it takes.
"As I have often felt," says Myyah, her gaze settling at last on Leah. "A soft touch is as effective as a firm one. All that matters is that things proceed as they must." Her delicate lips curve in a slight smile. "I am interested in seeing what you'll produce. The 'material' should be sufficient at this stage. It's only a matter of how it is used."
Still, she shakes her head. "I remember when he began his assignment. A medical student and talented Gear pilot with solid record from Jugend... if with a few warning signs." She smiles, knowingly. "Aren't they always? He will suffice, if he doesn't break."
But it's not Loren which she has come to speak to Leah regarding, truly.
"He thought it wise that one of us assist in monitoring the transfer," she says, and she does not speak of Ramses. "In the event of any... unexpected incidents," Myyah clarifies, her smile apologetic. "It should arrive in a few days and be in place by the time your operation commences. From there... it will be up to you, Major."
Everything is unfolding as it must.
<Pose Tracker> Leah Sadalbari has posed.
All that matters...
True enough. Leah inclines her head, when Myyah mentions the matter of how it is used. "Then we'll see."
Leah remembers, too, when Loren started his assignment. But not in the same way that Myyah does. How much does she remember?
Does she remember 'him', too?
"Yes."
But Ramses is not the one, no. Leah considers the transfer, and nods once again. "I see." She does not call it reasonable or unreasonable; it is what it is.
'It'...
"I will allow nothing to interfere," Leah assures Myyah.
"What must be will be."
Everything.